Chapter 25 Mehar
Mehar
Rita’s house was full of people and empty of peace.
Everyone had come because that’s what this family did when one of theirs was in trouble.
They gathered. They showed up. They filled the kitchen and the living room and the front porch with their bodies and their worry and hoped that proximity was enough to fix what was broken.
Prime and Zainab were there with the twins, who were crawling across the living room floor getting into everything they could reach.
Yusef was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework like the world wasn’t falling apart around him, which was either resilience or denial and at his age it was hard to tell the difference.
Justice had Storie and Dream with him because he didn’t have a sitter and couldn’t leave them alone.
Storie was in the corner on a borrowed phone because Justice hadn’t replaced the one he put down the garbage disposal yet and she had somehow finessed one from somebody.
Dream was following the twins around trying to mother them even though she wasn’t much older than they were.
Justice told me he had my brother still stashed in his basement for now.
Quest was pacing. He’d been pacing since we got here, moving between the kitchen and the living room with his phone in his hand waiting for something to ring or buzz or vibrate with information that would tell him where his sister was.
I’d never seen him this agitated. Even during my kidnapping he’d been controlled, focused, methodical.
This was different. This was guilt wearing a hole in Rita’s hardwood floor.
“Come sit down,” I told him when he passed me for the sixth time.
“I can’t sit down.”
“You’re going to wear a path in your grandmother’s floor.”
“Then she can bill me for it.” He kept pacing.
I let him go because some men needed to move when they were scared and Quest was terrified even if he’d never use that word.
He’d asked Serenity to make that call to Mega.
He’d put her back in the orbit of the man who abused her.
And now she was gone and the weight of that was sitting on his shoulders heavier than anything I’d ever seen him carry.
Zainab caught my eye from across the room and tilted her head toward the back door. I nodded and we slipped outside to the small patio where Rita kept her potted plants and a bench that had seen decades of family conversations.
“How are you holding up?” she asked, pulling me into a hug that lasted longer than our usual greeting.
“I’m scared for her, Zai.”
“Me too.” She sat on the bench and I sat next to her and for a minute we just sat there listening to the sounds of the house through the screen door. Kids laughing, somebody opening the fridge, Quest’s footsteps back and forth.
“How’s Yusef doing?” I asked because I needed to talk about something other than Serenity for thirty seconds before I lost my mind.
“Good. He’s adjusting. School is going well, his grades are up. He’s been asking about you actually. Wants to know when Auntie Mehar is coming to his next recital.”
“Tell him I’ll be there.” I meant it. That boy had been through more than most adults I knew and he was still standing and still playing his piano. He was doing well in school. He had a bright future ahead of him.
“And how are things with you and Quest? Because from the way that man looks at you, I’m guessing things have progressed since the last time we talked.”
“Progressed is one word for it.” I almost smiled. “He’s reversing his vasectomy.”
Zainab’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“Yeah we both want a family. After getting kidnapped I realized I was just spinning in different directions trying to heal. But I’m beyond my past now. I want a normal life with a man I love. I want my spa and a family.”
“Mehar Ali, what did you do to that man?”
“I didn’t do anything. He just decided he wanted a different life. And apparently I’m part of that life.”
“You’re all of that life. I can see it.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “I’m happy for you, sis. After everything, you deserve this.”
We sat there for a few more minutes talking about the twins and Prime and how Zainab was adjusting to motherhood and whether the medspa idea was still on track.
Normal sister stuff. The conversations we used to have before kidnappings and casino shootings and missing family members turned every gathering into a crisis meeting.
I missed it. I missed just being Zainab’s sister without the world being on fire.
The screen door opened and Rita stepped out onto the patio. She moved slow with one hand on the doorframe and the other gripping her cane. Her face was set in something hard and heavy that I’d only seen once before, the night Vivica showed up at her birthday party.
“Everybody come inside,” she said. “I need to say something.”
We followed her back in. The living room got quiet fast because when Rita spoke, everybody listened. Quest stopped pacing. Prime stood up from the couch with a twin on each hip. Justice muted his phone. Even the kids seemed to sense that something was happening and settled down.
Rita sat in her chair at the head of the room and folded her hands in her lap and took a breath that seemed to pull the air out of the entire house.
“I think Serenity is pregnant,” she said.
The room went dead. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
“What?” Quest said. His voice was barely there.
“The last few days she was here, she was sick every morning. Trying to hide it from me but I could hear her in the bathroom throwing up before she thought I was awake. She was eating differently too. Avoiding certain smells, picking at her food, going to bed earlier than usual. And she was touching her stomach. I can’t see but I can hear hands moving and I heard her hands on her belly more than once when she didn’t think anybody was paying attention.
” Rita’s voice was steady but her chin trembled once before she locked it down.
“I know the signs. That girl is carrying a baby.”
“Mega’s baby,” Justice said quietly.
Nobody corrected him because the math was obvious. If Serenity was pregnant, the father was the man who’d been abusing her, the man who’d gotten her hooked on coke, the man who was now holding her captive somewhere in Virginia, no doubt with drugs and zip ties.
Quest sat down for the first time all night. Just dropped into a chair like his legs had finally given up on him. He put his head in his hands and stayed there for a long time and nobody interrupted him because there was nothing to say that would make this better.
“We’re going to Dante’s,” Quest said, lifting his head. His eyes were red but dry. “He set her up. She went to his house and never came back. That means he knows something.” He stood up and looked at Prime and Justice. “Both of you, let’s go. Now.”
Prime handed the twins to Zainab without a word. Justice was already grabbing his keys.
Quest walked over to me and put his hands on my face and kissed my forehead. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to. His eyes said it all. I’ll be back. I’m going to find her. Don’t worry about me.
“Be careful,” I said.
“Always.”
He wasn’t always careful. He was never careful. But I let him say it because we both needed the lie right now.
I stood at the window and watched the three Banks brothers walk out of Rita’s house and get into the Maybach together.
Quest driving, Prime in the passenger seat, Justice in the back already on the phone.
They pulled away from the curb and the taillights disappeared down the street and the house felt emptier the second they were gone.
Rita was still sitting in her chair with her hands folded and her face pointed toward the window she couldn’t see through.
“They’ll find her,” I said, because somebody needed to say it out loud.
“They better,” Rita said. “Because if that man hurts my grandbaby or the child she’s carrying, there won’t be enough of him left to bury.”